


Brothers

by Syls Darkplace (sylsdarkplace)



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Brothers, Gen, Teenage Rebellion
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-01-13
Updated: 2015-01-13
Packaged: 2018-03-07 11:58:17
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,328
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3173168
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sylsdarkplace/pseuds/Syls%20Darkplace
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Non-supernatural AU in which Mary didn’t die, and she and John raised the boys together. Just a little Tumblr conversation inspired headcanon</p>
            </blockquote>





	Brothers

Dean is still the obedient son who excels in sports and academics. His teen rebellion is drinking with his jock friends and fooling around with one girlfriend after another. Sam on the other hand feels smothered by the conservative social conventions of small town Kansas; although he does well enough in elementary and middle-school. He’s in scouts as Dean had been and plays soccer, but he has a difficult time transitioning to high school. He’s fast but not all that aggressive. He isn’t willing to fit in with the jocks the way Dean did.

He excels in classes that interest him like literature and social studies, and squeaks by with ‘C’s in those he doesn’t. He tends to butt heads with authoritarian teachers who remind him of his dad. He’s in theater, but stays behind the scenes. His friends are misfits like him — a stoner, a deaf kid, a girl who dresses butch. They’re smart and funny. They get high behind the bleachers during lunch and spend Saturday nights in the stoner’s basement watching movies or listening to music and playing video games. The girl, Andi, is the first person Sam has sex with. It’s fumbling and humorous and they don’t let it ruin their friendship. The older he gets, the less he seems to have in common with his brother.

Dean goes to college on a baseball scholarship, but keeps his grades up enough to continue when he proves to not be good enough for the pros. He meets a girl his junior year, and they go steady through the next three semesters. They marry a week after Dean passes the bar, and eight months later their first child arrives. Both sets of parents pretend the baby is a little premature. Dean gets a job with a major insurance company and his wife goes to work when the baby, a boy, is two months old. Mary babysits while they’re at work.

Sam is best man at Dean’s wedding and three days later sets off on a European backpacking tour. He misses his orientation at the university and doesn’t return to the states for three years. He sends Dean and his mom postcards and letters as he makes his way through Europe, the Mediterranean and Middle East into Asia. When he returns finally to the states, it isn’t to go to college but to become a social and environmental activist. He has a few scrapes with the law at protests that leaves his father quietly fuming. Mary quits trying to talk to him about their youngest son and the rift between them grows.

Dean’s job bores him beyond tears. His wife is too involved with the kids, community and church duties to pay him much attention. He tried to follow his colleagues examples by playing golf and watching sports, but it all feels hollow to him. He thinks about having an affair. Plenty of women appear interested, but he’s loyal to a fault. Still, his right hand is seeing way more action than his bed. With his own marriage slowly imploding, Dean is somewhat envious of Sam for going his own way. They talk on the phone at least once a week, and Sam tells him all about his work. Dean is impressed by his brother’s commitment and the importance of what he’s doing. He knows that some of the things Sam does are risky and illegal. He warns him to be careful, and Sam shrugs it off with a statement about how other lives are just as important as his.

When Sam gets caught breaking into the office of a coal company whose mining operation is poisoning local ground water, Sam’s one phone call is to Dean. Dean kisses his sleeping children, leaves a note for his wife, and gets on the next plane to West Virginia. Within hours, he’s meeting with his client, his little brother, who has three inches and a world’s more experience that him. He tells Sam that he’s proud of him and that he’s going to see this thing through. And he means it.

But Sam’s in a world of shit. The other activist who was with him had a gun and shot a guard. Sam didn’t know about the gun, but they’re both being charged with breaking and entering as well as attempted murder. Dean isn’t a criminal lawyer and has to find a criminal defense attorney licensed to practice law in West Virginia who is willing to take the case. Then he works his ass off help prepare Sam’s defense.

His employer gives him an ultimatum — be back by Monday or look for another job. He stays in West Virginia. His wife doesn’t even go that far. She files for divorce. He figures it was the excuse she was looking for. His father calls and argues rationally at first, then demands angrily that Dean get his ass back where it belongs and deal with his own responsibilities. Dean remembers playing Batman as a kid and jumping off the shed roof. Sammy, wearing a makeshift Superman cape, following him and breaking his arm. Dean doesn’t budge. He’s not going to knuckle under this time. When John won’t listen to reason, Dean hangs up on him. He sits down on the edge of his hotel bed and wonders if he’s doing the right thing.

A moment later his cell phone rings. It’s his mom. She tells him how proud she is that he’s still looking out for Sam. She tells him to be careful and that she loves him and so does his dad. He scoffs, but he knows it’s true. He wonders whether, when this is all over, he’ll have anything to go back to Kansas for other than visiting his kids and mom. Will his dad even talk to him after screwing up his life so badly, for what? For his no-good, irresponsible, shiftless brother. "Fuck you, Dad," he mutters even though he’s somewhat bewildered at how many bridges he’s been willing to burn for the little brother who wanted to be nothing like him. He isn’t sure how he’ll rebuild his life, but he’s pretty sure it will look very different than the one he’d been leading.

Sam is stunned at Dean’s support. It’s not that he’d doubted Dean cared about him, but he never imagined that Dean had the will to sacrifice his comfortable middle-class life for anything or anyone. He feels painfully grateful and strangely as lighthearted as he had as a kid. He'd planted his feet and pulled the baseball bat back over his shoulder. Dean leaned forward with the baseball behind his back. The summer sun beat down on them, darkening the freckles across Dean’s nose and tinting the edges of his ears pink.

“Ready?” Dean asked.

Sammy took a deep breath. “Yeah.”

“Okay, remember what I told ya,” Dean said. His foot came off the ground as his arm swept back and then forward. Sam kept his eye on the ball and swung. He felt the impact as the ball whacked off the Louisville slugger. Dean put his hand over his eyes and watched the ball curve up over the back fence and into the neighbor’s yard. He turned to Sam with a grin.

"Told you you could do it," Dean said. Sam grinned right back and couldn’t help but melt a little inside when Dean put an arm around his shoulders. "This calls for Popsicles," Dean said. "Cherry, right?"

Sam nodded and then shrugged. "I’ll never be as good as you."

"That’s true," Dean said with a smirk. "But hey, it doesn’t even matter. It’s a game, Sammy, and it’s what I like doing. What’s important is being as good as you can be at what’s important to you."

Sam was sure that Dean had heard that from Mom or a teacher, but it was still nice, and the Popsicles were cold and sweet. And it was him and Dean. That was important.


End file.
